Episodes
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In the Mood: Deciphering Complex Brain Signals
The human brain contains approximately 86 billion neurons, and 100 trillion connections between those neurons. Despite our inability to image each neuron and determine their exact connective patterns, several approaches for noninvasive imaging of the living brain have been developed and utilized…
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Improving Human Health One Atom at a Time - Biomedical Accelerator Mass Spectrometry
Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is a sensitive mass spectrometric method for detecting and quantifying rare long-lived isotopes with high precision. This technique is widely employed in the earth and environmental sciences and is now being applied in the biomedical fields. AMS is primarily…
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Building Biologically Inspired Nano-Bots
Find out about both synthetic and molecular biology approaches to produce small nano-machines (nano-bots). The main building blocks for these nano-bots are based on nano-lipo-protein particles (NLPs). Nano-bots represent a unique solution for new approaches to vaccines, drug delivery and energy...
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3D Printing: From Imagination to Realization
Revolutionary changes to materials and structures are now possible with 3D printing, bringing concepts that were previously only imagined into reality. This breakthrough technology fabricates components by adding material layer by layer from the bottom up allowing for the creation of highly…
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Reconstructing a Rabies Epidemic: Byte by Byte
A vast majority of the newly discovered human pathogens are viruses that have jumped to humans from an animal host ("cross-species transmission"). Find out how biologists and computer scientists have collaborated and used cutting edge ultra-deep sequencing technology to study the dynamics of a…
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Forensic Science in Crisis: How Proteins Can Help
In the last decade, the scientific foundations of a number of traditional forensic methods have come under increasing criticism by the scientific community, leading to their discontinuation or reduced effectiveness in criminal prosecutions. These challenges raise questions about the admissibility...
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Behold Livermorium: A Quest for New Elements
Everything we can see and touch is made up of chemical elements as illustrated on the Periodic Table of Elements. The heaviest, naturally occurring element is uranium. Using high-energy particle accelerators, scientists have created even heavier elements extending the Periodic Table of Elements…
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From Basketball and Medicine to Climate: Understanding the World through Statistics
Statistics is the science of data: measuring and assessing uncertainty and more generally, learning from data. Since scientific, technical, and social disciplines all need to make conclusions based on data, statistics provides them with tools essential for their advances. From player stats to...
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iChip: Human Physiology in the Palm of Your Hand
Despite being diminutive in size, iChips have the potential to make big impacts on drug development and medical treatment testing. Lawrence Livermore National Lab is replicating the human body on a miniature scale, specifically focusing on brain physiology. Capturing human physiology outside the...
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Computer Simulations of Earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay Area
Computer simulations of earthquake shaking can provide valuable information on the expected intensity of shaking from earthquakes. Arthur Rodgers, a seismologist/geophysicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, covers seismic hazard in the Bay Area, describes computer simulations of past…
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Hydrology of an Ant Farm
How does groundwater interact with surface water and surface ecosystems? How can the many types and forms of groundwater pollution be visualized? This presentation by Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s Andy Tompson shows some of the real or potential impacts of drought and climate change and how...
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Shale Gas Revolution
The new abundance of natural gas provides energy options for America, including clean electric power. Oil production has increased, reducing the dependence of the US on imported petroleum. Both benefits come with the challenge of managing the environmental impact of new oil and gas development in...
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Green Power: Making Electricity out of Thin Air
What are fossil fuels? What is the greenhouse effect? How are the two related? Can we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and lower the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere? Wind and solar power can help lead the way. Learn how state-of-the-art science and engineering can be used to...
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The Cardioid Project: Simulating the Human Heart on the World's Fastest Supercomputer
Computer modeling is a powerful tool for scientific inquiry when experiments are too costly, too dangerous, or simply impossible. Computational physicist David Richard describes how to build a computer model of a human heart, starting from an individual cell and then using data from an actual...
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Menacing Microbes: Protein Models Reveal Secrets
Microbes are living organisms too small to be seen. While most are friendly to humans, some microbes, called pathogens, can cause disease. Although the medical field has created miraculous antimicrobial drugs to ward them off, menacing microbes often change their protein make-up in devious ways…
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Fusion Modeling: Using Big Computers to Understand One of the Universe's Biggest Secrets
Fusion energy is a possible long-term energy solution to provide the energy needed to drive economic growth and social development. Harnessing the energy of the Sun and stars here on Earth requires a detailed understanding of the behavior of matter at extreme temperature and density conditions....
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Computer Simulation: Exploring Nature with a Computer
Computers are becoming an increasingly cheaper, more powerful tool that cannot be ignored by professionals. Computer simulation reproduces the behavior of natural and man-made systems to help us understand, predict, and communicate. Vic Castillo, a research engineer at the Lawrence Livermore...
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Veterans Internship
The successes of the Veterans Internship program at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. [Public Affairs] [Education] [Show ID: 27766]
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Medical Radar: Next Generation Life Saving Medical Devices
We live in a time where miraculous medical discoveries are occurring all the time. Regrettably many of the miracle tools, because of their size and complexity, are confined to state of the art medical centers in large cities. Learn about efforts to build new medical tools in the hope of saving...
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The 'Bio' in Biofuels: New Energy from Ancient Life
The most ancient forms of life - bacteria - are exceptionally tiny organisms, yet they have contributed in big ways to our planet. Although long recognized for causing disease, microbes have had a tremendous impact on our survival, and now can help us solve some of our urgent energy problems....
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The Extreme X-Ray Universe: Discovery Science with NASA's NuSTAR Mission
NASA's NuSTAR spacecraft, launched in June of 2012, uses technology developed in part by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to take pictures of the sky in the most energetic X-rays ever to be focused. Bill Craig and Michael Pivovaroff talk about the innovative technology at the heart of…
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Detecting Pathogen DNA: Making Medical Diagnostics Fast Accurate and Cheap
When a killer infection spreads in the movies, the doctors triage and isolate the patients while a medical biologist races to diagnose the illness and find a cure. Inevitably a national emergency follows as the virus or bacteria wipe out an unsuspecting population. While this may be Hollywood's...
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The Gamma-Ray Spectrometer at Mercury: A Seven Year Journey to the Innermost Planet
After traveling through the inner solar system for seven years, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft reached Mercury in March 2011 and became the first ever mission to orbit this mysterious planet. Since then MESSENGER has been making measurements with its suite of scientific instruments including...
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Sleuthing Seismic Signals: Understanding Earthquake Hazard and Monitoring Nuclear Explosions
The probability of a magnitude 6.7 or greater earthquake in the Greater Bay Area during the next 30 years is 63 percent, or about two out of three. Lawrence Livermore National Lab scientist Sean Ford and teacher Ken Wedel discuss what an earthquake of that size in the Bay Area would look like and...
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Fighting Super Bugs: Overcoming Antibiotic Resistance
Paul Jackson, Division Leader of the Biosciences and Biotechnology Division at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, presents a brief history of antibiotic use and discusses the medical and public policy factors that are, in part, responsible for increased antibiotic resistance in pathogenic microbes....
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Space Junk: Traffic Cops in Space
Space junk - thousands of debris objects are hurtling around the earth with the potential of crashing into one another. As we launch more satellites, the risk of a satellite colliding with another satellite or a piece of space junk increases, threatening those satellite services we depend on.…
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Restoring Sight to the Blind: Bridging the Medical Gap with Technology
Millions of people worldwide suffer from ocular diseases that degrade the retina, the light-processing component of the eye, causing blindness. A team from Lawrence Livermore National labs describes how the nervous system works and how neurons communicate then discuss the first long-term retinal...
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Proton Therapy for Cancer: Addressing a Big Problem with a Small Machine
George Caporaso, LLNL scientist, explores the role radiation plays in the treatment of cancer, and in particular, how the use of energetic proton beams could improve cancer treatment. Unfortunately, this type of treatment has limited availability due to the large size and cost of current proton...
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It’s Gust About Time: Harnessing the Wind for Our Energy Needs
Can we produce much of the energy we need from clean, renewable sources? Jeff Mirocha, atmospheric scientist and the technical leader of LLNL's wind energy research group, and Sonia Wharton, post-doctorate scholar in the Climate/Carbon Science Group, argue that wind energy can lead the way. Learn...
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Superheavy Elements: Search for the End of the Periodic Table
The periodic table is on the wall of most science classrooms, but it is changing. Ken Moody, Chief Scientist for Radiochemistry, explains that recent discoveries of new elements have extended the periodic table beyond what was thought was possible, and demonstrates the existence of a collection…
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Withstanding Climate Change: You Can Change the World
LLNL scientist Dean Williams explores the evolution of climate models with from the mid 1970's to the present. Methods for testing climate models against a variety of benchmarks such as historical climate changes or seasonal changes are explained. Several key issues arising from global climate...
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Distant Worlds: Making Images of Other Solar Systems
400 years ago, our world-view changed when Galileo proved that the Earth was not the center of the universe but orbits around the Sun. 15 years ago the world shifted again when the first planets were discovered orbiting other stars. Last year, using adaptive optics and the 10 meter W.M. Keck...
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Storing Carbon Dioxide in the Earth Not the Atmosphere
Hydrocarbon fuels come almost exclusively from underground. We burn the coal or oil to obtain energy - and for hundreds of years, we have then allowed the resulting carbon dioxide to simply enter the atmosphere. Ken Wedel, Tracy High School Earth Science teacher,explores the role that underground...
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Harnessing Fusion Energy: The Power of Light
Our future health, happiness and economic well-being depends on producing plentiful, inexpensive, carbon-free energy that is available 24 hours/day, worldwide. Coal, oil and gas supply over 80% of the world's energy but cause pollution and add to global warming. Renewable energy, such as wind and...
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Understanding Climate Change: Seeing the Carbon Through the Trees
It is very likely that rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere resulting from human activity are increasing global temperatures and changing Earth's climate. Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s Karis MacFarlane explains about the carbon cycle, ways that forests and soils store carbon…
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It’s a Breeze: Using the Wind to Power Our Future
Those windmills spinning away in the hills and mountain passes provide clean and renewable energy to our power grids. Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s Julie Lundquist explains how wind turbines convert the forces of the atmosphere into electricity for our homes, businesses, and even cars.…
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Aerogels: The Materials Science of Empty Space
Aerogels are a class of materials with fascinating properties but they are hardly materials at all as they can be composed of up to 99.8% empty space. Aerogels are among the most versatile materials available for technical applications due to their wide variety of exceptional properties. This...
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Order from Chaos: The Birth of the Solar System
The solar system formed from a cloud of interstellar gas and dust cloud about 4.6 billion years ago. Life began on earth about 3.5 billion years ago following a period of intense bombardment by asteroid fragments and comets, intense volcanism and finally development of a stable crust and a...
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Avoiding Armageddon: Diverting Asteroids with Nuclear Explosives
Every couple of years, the earth is hit by a body with energy near that of the Hiroshima bomb. Deposited high in the atmosphere these events causes little or no damage. On longer timescales, impacts occur with the potential to destroy regions, or whole civilizations. Learn about the impact…
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Star Power on Earth: The Path to a Limitless Clean Energy Future
Ed Moses, Director of the National Ignition Facility describes the path to a limitless supply of clean, safe energy. He explains how the world’s biggest, most energetic laser works and it’s goals. Nearing completion, the NIF will focus its giant laser beams on a tiny target filled with hydrogen....
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Our Dark and Messy Universe: How One Particle Might Light the Way
For the first time in history, man has a detailed accounting of what makes up the universe. Yet, 95 percent of the universe defies detection. Lawrence Livermore National Lab scientist Steve Asztalos explains how scientists have come to this understanding of the universe and what they think makes…
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Geothermal Energy: Harnessing the Heat Beneath Your Feet
Right below your feet is a source of renewable energy that is largely untapped. It heats groundwater by conduction and convection as it travels toward the surface of the earth. Lawrence Livermore National Lab scientists Carol Bruton and John Ziagos explain how geothermal energy can be used to...
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From the Sun to the Sun: The Story on the National Ignition Facility and Our Energy Future
Creating a star on Earth is the goal of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world's largest laser. When completed in 2009, NIF will focus 192 giant laser beams on a BB-sized target filled with hydrogen fuel - fusing, or igniting, the hydrogen atoms' nuclei. This is the same fusion energy...
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Protecting the Nation’s Livestock: Corralling Foreign Diseases
Veterinarians are playing an important role in protecting the nation's food supply. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory veterinarian Dr. Pamela Hullinger describes how scientists at the lab are working to develop tests and computer disease models to detect toxins and keep our national…
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Greenhouse Reduction - Underground Storage of Carbon Dioxide
Most scientists agree that man-made carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is the main cause of climate change. So why not store it somewhere instead of releasing it to the air? Great idea and scientists have been thinking about this for some time. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory...
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Driving a Rocket Fueled Car: 500 Miles at 400 Degrees Below Zero
The physical and chemical properties of hydrogen make its use superior to fossil fuels. Producible virtually anywhere from using electricity, it is a simple, non-toxic molecule that can generate electricity or power vehicles cleanly, efficiently, and even silently, if we choose. Development of...
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Energy Crisis: Will Technology Save Us?
Will we run out of certain forms of energy, such as oil, and what are the replacement options? How does hydrogen fit into the future U.S. energy picture? What is carbon sequestration and why does it matter? What about sustainable energy sources such as solar, wind and geothermal? John Ziagos,...
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Accelerator Mass Spectrometry: How AMS Works in Biology and Health Care
Carbon dating is a technology borne out of archeologists' desire to date ancient artifacts but it has also spawned exciting applications in biomedical science. Techniques refined at Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry are being used to address research...
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Comets and the Stardust Mission: What’s in our Solar System’s Freezer?
The occasional appearance of comets has awed humans throughout history. But how much do we really know about comets? Did a comet kill the dinosaurs? And, what can comets tell us about our own ancient history? With comet dust from NASA’s Stardust mission, scientists like Hope Ishii, a Research...
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The National Ignition Facility: Making Star Power on Earth
Imagine a sphere much smaller than a pea releasing enough energy to supply all of the electricity needs of the United States for a brief moment in time. How could this be possible? At the National Ignition Facility, a huge laser in Livermore, California, scientists and engineers are nearly ready…
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